Yesterdays [Shaoling, Yugiri]

The wastes of Asia were a place Shaoling found rather pleasant to travel with her student. After all, what better than a wide-open land, filled with those who survived by strength? It was ideal for helping him to grow stronger, and frankly, she'd just come to enjoy the freedom these wastes carried with them. But when a certain energy she'd not felt in several years now came into the edge of her senses, Shaoling stopped her training for a moment, and took a cross-legged seat atop a small mount.

With a deep breath, she tightened her own spiritual energy, her omnipresent shunko now whipping up a small gale around her. In itself, it was quite a basic exercise, but it was one she needed to keep up with regardless. If the young girl she'd helped to train years ago happened to sense it? That was perfectly fine, so far as Shaoling was concerned. She imagined the young woman would have to come this direction, besides.

"Sui-Feng?"

She mused from a distance, cocking her head to the side while she glanced in the general direction. It was a bit strange in her head that the woman would be here of all places but it made sense if she thought about it, she had already disappeared before Yugiri's banishment.

"If I didn't know any better I'd think you called me on purpose?"

The vizard sang while appearing in view after a single flash step, her shunpo jumping the distance to quietly appear in view of the fellow shinigami. Yugiri's metallic gaze lazily looking at the former captain thoughtfully. She looked well, didn't she?

"Then you thought correctly. I was certainly surprised to sense you in this part of the world, Yugiri."

Standing from her cross-legged position, Shaoling ended up still a touch shorter than the woman she'd once helped raise, even if in a fairly impersonal fashion. It wasn't especially bothersome for her, though. After all, she was entirely used to others being taller than herself. If anything, it was more odd that Yugiri was about the same height.

"Then again, I don't imagine it's any less surprising to see me here, either. Keeping up with your training?"

Right to the point. She could have asked after her well-being, if she was doing well, all of those sorts of things. But Shaoling was fairly certain those could easily be discerned simply by asking about more pressing matters.

Yugiri wondered why the woman would think it strange, the wastelands were a perfect place for training and improvement but she supposed that it should be pretty surprising like how big's the world right. There was a bit of a grin though it was a happy coincidence.

"Of course I have. I'm going to be the unparalleled hoho master after all."

She said with the same confidence she always declared it in her youth, even if she felt utterly nervous and self-conscious when she first became a vizard to walk from the stares those things faded into the back of her mind. Now she didn't care except chasing that dream even harder and be unable to be caught by anyone while she danced around even the fastest of foes.

Such confidence was among the most significant reasons why Shaoling had been willing to maintain training the young woman through her recovery. That self-assuredness went far for her, and it was the very same reason she'd taken Yuujin under her wing before she left. It reminded her of herself, though she'd always seen some degree of that in Yugiri.

"I wouldn't expect anything less. I'm sure you'd be willing to show me how far you've come in the past few years, right?"

The slightest grin slipped onto Shaoling's features, clearly already prepared for Yugiri to accept the challenge. Her bout with Erika had reminded her of the thrill of pushing oneself, and even if she wasn't the sort to seek out danger on a whim, she knew that an opportunity to test a former pupil didn't come often.

A test from an old teach, huh? The grin slipped onto her features at the challenge offered and Yugiri relaxed a bit, the action of moving her body in a casual manner being used as a cover for her shunpo where the woman left an afterimage in her spot. Yugiri's blinding speed and flash step skills being more than enough for the vizard to take the long way and come from the side without missing a beat.

If she came from the front then she'd be more likely for Shaoling to see her approach but if she dashed at a forty-five degree angle, formed a reishi platform to kick off and attack from the side then she felt more confident in being able to appear in her old teacher's personal space with her foot ready to caress the side of Shaoling's head and send her flying a good distance.

"Of course. I gotta beat you if I'm going to get to the top anyway."

Though her statement took far longer for her to say than the time which her attack was executed in.

Shaoling wasn't the sort to be caught off guard by that sort of misdirection, at least not entirely. Yugiri's technique was certainly impressive, but if that was all she had, the peak would evade her forever. As her former pupil came in for her strike, Shaoling raised her own leg in a rapid response, striking out with a kick of her own to meet the blow head-on.

"Good. Keep that drive firmly in your mind."

Even in that one strike, Shaoling had been able to gauge just how far Yugiri had come in the few years she'd been absent. It brought a faint bit of pride into her chest, though she certainly had no intention of holding back simply because she was pleased by that growth. If anything, it only gave her more reason to push both herself and Yugiri in this bout.

Shaoling's hand quickly moved to strike the leg that had impacted her own, though she didn't expect Yugiri to respond so slowly that it would actually connect. This was simply a way to force her into at least a marginally less secure position.

When Shaoling countered, Yugiri's leg used the momentum of striking the former captain's leg to continue with the motion and remove herself from Shaoling's personal space to avoid the strike towards her leg though leave her floating in midair. An otherwise vulnerable position for someone that relied on hoho however Yugiri desired to be a bird.

"Shikko!"

She wouldn't walk on the ground, she'd fly in the sky. The chirping sound of her reiatsu rushing through her body while the requirement of foothold and movement of her legs was pointless. The difference between others and her is that they walked and she didn't.

No longer bound by needing to step she appeared with far greater speed than she could muster in her base form from behind Shaoling in such a manner that she couldn't do physically if not for the liberating movement technique that was Shikko and from there she'd strike at Shaoling's left side with a strike from her fist.

Shaoling certainly wasn't such an amateur to be caught off guard by this technique, though she would certainly admit that it was impressive. The combination of kido and hoho was one she herself had contemplated in the past, but it would only have distracted from her more pressing pursuits. Still, if she was being shown this, then she ought to reply in turn, hm?

"Clever."

Had she not been so prepared for an attack from any angle, Shaoling suspected she might not have been able to respond to Yugiri's speed. As it stood, however, she released the full speed of her Eikyuukaiten Shunko, the breeze that always surrounded her suddenly whipping into an extreme gale before once again the energy seemed to disappear, even as the wind itself still blew. This was, of course, accompanied by her turning quite quickly, meeting Yugiri's blow with one of her own.

"You've improved."

What a pain, her teacher's shunko was going to be annoying to deal with if it had improved this much. There was something distinctly different about it which told her that it wasn't the same shunko that she'd seen earlier in her life from Shaoling. Not that it mattered though, it was far easier to smirk and try to jab at the woman's pride to give an opening - not that the exact same thing would probably succeed on her too.

"Or you're getting old."

Her shikko refusing to have her tossed away by the gale but unable to make the hit connect changed tact, instead she turned to catch Shaoling's striking limb to use the momentum combined with her own shikko's ability to facilitate effortless movement.

"Shikko: Daikoma."

Countering the attack by trying to take away the solid position of Shaoling and enter a spinning motion which would have her teacher unable to respond from the force of the move keeping her body being pulled in both directions to hopefully let her go and be thrown into the ground with all the additional built up power of the rotation.